“Olympics sponsor Samsung is reportedly dropping Galaxy Note 3 smartphones in athletes’ goodie-bags, though the gift comes with a catch: a supposed ban on any other device branding, iPhone or otherwise, during the opening ceremony,” Chris Davies reports for SlashGear. “Details of the clamp-down, which is said to require the Apple logo on an iPhone be physically covered so that it’s not caught on camera during the televised ceremony in Sochi, were spilled by the Swiss Olympic team.”
“The Note 3 [was] in among the other promotional kit sponsors have been offering, Bluewin reports, but the phone came with guidelines on what Samsung is said to be requiring in return for its financial support,” Davies reports. “Samsung is pushing the Note 3 hard at the Olympics, equipping what it’s describing as its ‘Galaxy Team’ athletes with the pen-enabled smartphone to demonstrate how their training and their trip abroad can be better documented.”
“Whether Samsung will get its wish or if the public eye will be distracted from its role in the event remains to be seen,” Davies reports. “Although the Swiss delegation is apparently happy with its accommodations, others visiting Sochi have been less impressed by the new hotels there, and quick to report their dissatisfaction with part-finished hotels and no running water.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Part-finished hotels and no running water. The perfect match for the user experience offered by Samsung phones.
Olympic athletes, cover the backs of your iPhones with these:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
MDN take = fucking brilliant.
I agree!
See?… that’s one if the many
reasons I visit this site! 😃
I agree – make those apple logs bigger!!! Lol 🙂
MDN Take = You rock!!
Excellent Comment: MacDailyNews Take: Part-finished hotels and no running water. The perfect match for the user experience offered by Samsung phones.
Love the MDN take, part finished and no running water is also an issue with India, where Samsung is king and apple should not bother with that cheap market
To be fair, no running water and non-finishes hotels is, in fact, an issue, but a minor issue — media loves to sensationalize things.
The bigger issue is that in preparation to those games, Putin and his friends stole $15 billion of people’s money.
Are the other Android phones also being covered? How about watches? Will the Microsoft Surface tablets have to be covered. Not sure but there may be 1 or 2 in the group.
I would put my Apple white headphones on and do the bite me!
I smell fear. What will they do when the friends and family are taking pictures? Are we going to block them too?
In that case, I’m not going…
If shitstung is sponsoring it I won’t be watching it anyway.
Anything that company does I have no interest in as far as I’m concerned they’re a lying, cheating ripoff merchant that steals ideas.
Any droid people use there will be instantly hacked, by the way… SPONSORSHIP!
This is just plain stupid.
They can’t police this or dictate this.
I disagree with MDN’s take by one degree. They should cover up their Note 2’s with the Apple stickers & leave the Apple logo on the back of the iPhone well alone.
Let’s see what Samsung says to that.
My suggestion to all of the American athletes – send the Note 3 back to SameSong and display your iPhones proudly! Since it is part of the deal, return the thing!!!!
Better yet, put a very noticeable cover or patch on your device. Red would be awesome, or white for dark devices.
The only sanction for using iPhones is to have to return the Note 3.
Use of your own devices is not banned, Samsung just tries to create an ‘everyone loves and sues our devices!’ narrative it can exploit to try making a point in the future.
Man they’re being petty little bitches.
It’s the Korean way, just accept it
It’s the same thing with all of the Games’ sponsors.
At London 2012, athletes were required to wear Adidas sportswear when out of competition regardless of whether they were contracted to Nike, Puma or whoever; so you could compete in your chosen brand – that being regarded as technical equipment – but at all other times you could only wear Adidas.
And don’t even get me started on McDonalds and Coca-Cola.
Place a piece of tape on the iPhones that says “Not a Samsung Device”
Who told those South Korean Athletes they were allowed to choose which phone they wanted to use … Shameful /s
Stupid. They are not going to make the athletes do anything, like putting a stupid sticker on the back of their iPhones, or only using the Samsung-supplied device at the ceremony. If they attempt to enforce (or even suggest) such a stupid rule, the athletes will tweet about it and the whole thing will blow up in Samsung’s face as an embarrassment.
It has already started.
Unfinished buildings are par for the course for Russian Olympics. I was at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and in the broadcast suite, they built it in such a rush that some of the offices had no doors and one particularly busy office had the door hung the wrong way round so that it opened into the corridor and blocked the corridor.
It might not have mattered, but in the world of broadcasting, everything needs to be done in a rush and so it wasn’t at all unusual for somebody to open that door in a hurry at exactly the same time that somebody was rushing down the corridor.
In Soviet Russia you don’t open the door, the door opens you!
The athletes will be able to buy the same Samsung device in a couple of months for about three bucks
so I say let’s support the athletes by telling them we will give them the same phone in three months and that they should proudly display Apple all over them and it would be really cheap advertisement for apple.
Why not cover the front of the Notes with Apple logo sticker!
This will be an Apple branded Olympics. You will see iPhones and Apple logos everywhere, there is nothing those corrupt bastards can do about that.
Many people will have a case or cover of some sort on their phones, so it’ll be impossible for Samsung to police anyway.
I’d tell them to go screw themselves anyway, what would they do, kick me out of the competition?
Wait…… I didn’t know the Olympics were being held in nazi Germany!?
I’d say the ban is definitely unenforceable. Most athletes will be too busy and preoccupied to be bothered with nonsense like that. However, I can’t blame Samsung for trying. That’s just par for the course when it comes to marketing.
And don’t forget all you Americans, tourists and athletes to use your cover up travel kit. You would not want to be recognized as a terrorist over there.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6666338/
These Olympics have apparently cost Russia $51bn to build and stage. That’s FIVE TIMES the amount Canada used to stage the last winter Olympiad, and FOUR TIMES the cost of London 2012.
That’s a lot of corruption and still everything is only half-built. Well done IOC. Hope you’re really proud of yourselves awarding that one. Roll on the 2018 World Cup too. Can’t wait to see the state the Russians make of that tournament…
The expense is not specific to the olympics but covers the cost of turning Sochi into a main warmwater touristic region for Russia. Construction will even accelerate once the games are over, as right now the priority was addressing last preparations for the games. 50$ is therefore conservative given the scale of the project.
Maybe the Olympians will come up with a new sport involving unwanted Samsung devices.
Skeet comes to mind because they’re so big they be easy targets
Isn’t this tacit acknowledgement by Shamesong that if you can’t see the logo you can’t tell it’s not their POS? If I were Apple I would use this in court. res ipsa loquitur.
Agitated Samesung Koreans riding a red truck to a thumping beat in black uniforms roundup Apple iPhones into a disheveled street pile and apply the fahrenheit flame thrower — Sochi 451.
For an event that supposedly celebrates amateur athletics, they sure are concerned with protecting their corporate benefactors.
Personally, I hate the fact that the clothing logos (the Nike swoosh, Addidas, etc.) are usually far larger and more prominent than the name of the nation being represented. Watch the close-ups of the athletes: they’re usually framed to include the uniform logo but crop out the national emblem.
But then, we must pay homage to our corporate overlords.